The overall purposes of this research are (1) to test an expanded, integrated, staged theoretical model designed to explain (a) the caregiver perceptions of the Caregiving Burden and (b) the Quality of Family Caregiving for a dependent elder; (2) to test the stability of the explanatory power of the model over a 12 month period and the predictive power of change in Stage of Caregiving: and (3) to test the impact of Ethnicity on the explanatory power of the model using families in 3 ethnic groups (Black-Americans, Euro-Americans, and Mexican-Americans). The research will be conducted in 2 phases with Phase I devoted to translating and testing measurement instruments that have previously been shown to be valid and reliable with Euro-American populations for use with Black-Americans and Mexican-Americans. Phase II will be devoted to testing the proposed model with three ethnic groups of elder- caregiver dyads at 2 points time. In Phase I, back translation and psychometric tests of equivalence (N=480) will be used to answer 2 research questions. In Phase II, a correlational descriptive, longitudinal design will be used to answer 6 research questions regarding model predictions (N=880). Elder-caregiver dyads residing in the community will be recruited from social service and home health agencies and from newspaper advertising. Data will be collected through two one-hour interviews with caregivers and two one-hour observation periods with the elder. Time 2 data will be collected in the same manner. Data will be collected in four sites (Boston, Detroit, Phoenix and Tucson). The results of this study will indicate the points in the caregiving process where interventions by nurses are likely to be most effective, thus enabling nurses to plan intervention strategies to assist families who are at high risk for providing poor quality elder caregiving. In addition, the results will indicate the degree to which the dynamics of caregiving change over time and the generalizability of the model to three ethnic groups.